5 takeaways from Eric Cantor shocker

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s astonishing loss in his primary Tuesday to an obscure economics professor named Dave Brat sent shock waves through the House, the GOP and the Virginia political establishment.

Cantor’s defeat will trigger a major reassessment of what until now had been seen as a promising 2014 primary season for the Republican establishment.

Radio host Laura Ingraham, writer Mickey Kaus and other opponents of “comprehensive” legislation spoke out vocally against Cantor on this issue. Ingraham even visited the Richmond-area district to stump against him.

The congressman went out of his way to distance himself from the attacks. He sent fliers that cited a story which called him “the No. 1 guy standing between the American people and immigration reform.” But it didn’t work.

Supporters of reform are quick to note that Sen. Lindsey Graham easily won his primary and avoided a runoff in conservative South Carolina despite his support for the controversial Senate bill.

But GOP members who are vulnerable to a primary challenge will be very hard pressed vote for such a bill post-Cantor.

The news will also work against Jeb Bush and, to a lesser extent, Marco Rubio, in the 2016 silent primary. Both Floridians have been supportive of reform, and Bush took heat earlier this year for saying people immigrate to the U.S. illegally as an “act of love” for their families. Each could still be the nominee, but the narrative on the right that they have a base problem is going to work against them.

The tea party is alive and well.

Previously, only one House incumbent had lost a primary this year: 91-year-old Ralph Hall in Texas.

Cantor’s loss, the first time this has ever happened to a House majority leader, comes just one week after conservative state Sen. Chris McDaniel forced a June 24 runoff against Sen. Thad Cochran in Mississippi.

Tuesday was the symbolic halfway point of primary season. The “establishment strikes back” narrative that has dominated since Sen. John Cornyrn crushed Steve Stockman in the Texas GOP Senate primary this March needs to be readjusted.

This may embolden activists in states where incumbents had looked safe. Milton Wolf, running for Senate in Kansas, put out a statement saying: “On August 5th, it’s Pat Roberts’ turn,” referring to the third-term Republican senator.

Democrats, meanwhile, noted that Cantor has been one of leading obstructionists of the Obama agenda and cited his defeat as proof that the tea party has taken over the GOP.

Cantor was overconfident.

Hindsight may be 20-20, but in retrospect there were signs of trouble for Cantor. Anti-Cantor activists dominated county and district level conventions, and they balked when he tried to install loyalists into key committee slots.

It’s not that he did nothing. Cantor raised and spent more than $5 million this cycle, and he had $1.5 million cash still on hand as of May 21. It’s unclear whether there’s anything Cantor could have done to prevent this.

But Cantor’s team downplayed the danger and convinced themselves the race could be close but there was no way he could lose. They downplayed the threat that Brat presented, comparing it to a 2012 challenge of Cantor that went nowhere.

The feeling among Cantor allies was that he would be in real danger if the nominee was picked at a convention, where activists dominate, but the electorate would be more mainstream in a higher-turnout primary.

Someone like Graham in South Carolina has believed he was genuinely in danger since right after the 2010 midterms, and he ramped up his organization accordingly.

It creates a power vacuum in the Virginia GOP.

In one the most important presidential battlegrounds, there is no longer a clear Republican leader. Cantor had passed on opportunities to run for an open U.S. Senate seat in 2012 and the open governorship in 2013.

Cantor was the nominal leader of the party after Bob McDonnell’s term as governor ended. Ken Cuccinelli, who lost the governor’s race last year, has largely faded from the public stage.

Ed Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman waging a long-shot campaign against Sen. Mark Warner, is now arguably the most important Republican in the state.

He and the chair of the cash-strapped state GOP, Pat Mullins, quickly offered support for Brat, even though no one really knows much about him at this point. It’s still unclear to what extent the seat will be in play this November.

“I can say without reservation that each of our candidates is highly-qualified, dedicated, and committed to the Commonwealth of Virginia and her people,” Mullins said in a statement. “One team, one fight, with one goal — victory!”

Never trust internal polls

Last Friday, Cantor’s campaign distributed an internal poll from John McLaughlin that showed him ahead 34 points over Brat. The firm, McLaughlin & Associates, said the margin of error for the May 27-28 survey was only 4.9 percentage points.

That same day, the Daily Caller published a poll from the new GOP firm Vox Populi that had Cantor ahead 13 points, 52-39, with 9 percent undecided.

House races are notoriously difficult to poll, but both of these surveys were embarrassingly wrong. And many Republican pollsters already had a serious reputation problem from their 2012 performance.